Egrigor
In the obscure parlance used in the study of mysticism and psychic phenomena, an egrigor is a persistent object or entity invoked into being by the concentrated force of will of multiple participants in a group of psychically talented participants, or visualization amongst participants in a mystical ceremony. Sometimes spelled as "egrigore" or "egregore" or "egrigori," this concept parallels the Asian concept of the tulpa. The claim has been put forth that these mentally projected "thought-forms" have even the capacity to effect tangible modifications to photographic film. It is, traditionally, easier to call into being and control such a thing with a multiplicity of minds attuned toward the task. An account (questionable as it may be, naturally) of such a thing falling out of the control of its divining mind is written in "Mysteries and Secrets of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah": "Alexandra David-Neel was travelling through Tibet, early in the twentieth century. She worked hard, exerting great concentration and mental energy, to produce an amiable little monk, plump, smiling, and totally benign. There are various accounts of what went wrong, but the tulpa she had created surreptitiously escaped from Alexandra's control and became what can only be described as some kind of independent entity. It was no longer plump and amiable. The smile became a triumphant sneer. Other members of the expedition could now see it clearly. The tulpa had become decidedly sinister. It took Alexandra a great deal of time and energy to destroy her creation, and in some accounts she also needed considerable help from experienced local lamas."Another work, this one on the "sexual psychopathology of witchcraft," reports: "Egrigors, once in existence, may develop wills of their own, passing beyond the control of their creator(s). Sometimes, it is reported, they turn upon their creators, inflicting bodily harm. There is the story of a young woman driven insane by the physical and mental cruelties of her Egrigor-lover...."An animated version (in several senses) is even hunted in one episode of the Columbia Pictures/DiC series, The Real Ghostbusters. The team finds themselves tracking the ghost of Sherlock Holmes -- a concededly fictional character, a creation solely of the mind of Sir Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the episode, Egon justifies this occurrence via the explanation of the ghost being such an egrigor, a physical manifestation of the fictional character brought into being by the strong feelings of fandom fealty. Now write that conception on a larger scale -- if it might be imagined, just imagined, that strength of collective appreciation might give rise to a ghost of a popular unquestionably fictional character, what might result from a similar direction of will towards belief in a person truly believed to have existed (whether or not they even did so)? What manifestations might be given wings upon faith so strong, redoubled by the apparent confirmatory power of every in a series of such manifestations? And indeed, the purported phenomena of the egrigor is, by some, credited with the experience of that which is believed to be miraculous. In The Golden Bough, James Frazer posited that "primitive man creates his gods in his own image." And so, it follows that were primitive man to possess the power to unknowingly modify some fractional fragment of his own physical reality, they would not only figuratively, but literally be creating their gods as egrigori in accord with their imagination. And, especially, if those primitives began with the veneration of the spirits of their own honored dead, imagine how inexorable might be the self-sustaining projectile path of the egrigoric deity as human ego magnified.